


someone to stay

by hellebored



Series: Thanatopsis [2]
Category: Helix (TV)
Genre: (i feel like Nobody Dies is a given at this point), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 19:53:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15803457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellebored/pseuds/hellebored
Summary: Sergio's newest nurse makes an amusing mistake; Anana questions some core aspects of Sergio's identity about a year and a half later than any reasonable person would.A gentle interstitial hospital scene set after Thanatopsis.





	someone to stay

**Author's Note:**

> This comes after [this drabble](https://philosoverted.tumblr.com/post/173242611800) and all that implies. Technically there should be a more serious half of this scene that takes place earlier in the day, but I'm all out of heartache at the moment, so you get this playful, lighthearted thing instead.

Sergio’s half-asleep when the door opens to his hospital room. A nurse he doesn’t recognize steps in carrying a tray: probably a resident, judging by his young appearance. The nurse glances at Anana, quietly reading a book and sipping a can of soda she’d gotten from the vending machine in the lobby, and then turns toward Sergio.

“Mr. Balleseros?”

He says the L’s,  _Baller-seros_ , and Anana chokes on the soda hard enough she has to wipe at her nose, and earns a concerned look from the nurse.

Sergio pauses, and then smoothly says, “Mister is what they call my old man. Please, call me Sergio.”

Smiling, the nurse hands him pills and a cup of water.

“When your old man comes to visit I’ll remember that,” he says, maybe taking a little longer than needed to smooth out the bed’s coverlet.

In the bedside chair Anana bites her lip and carefully and studiously stares straight out the window until the nurse is gone. When she turns back toward the bed her eyes are damp from silent laughter.

“It’s not that funny,” Sergio says, flicking the empty plastic cup at her.

“I dunno, watching you struggle over whether or not to make a pretty nurse feel stupid just about made my evening. After all, he might stop flirting with you.”

“Are you done?”

“Why not Ortega or something?”

“Ortega?”

“Instead of Balleseros. At least most people know how to say Ortega.”

“I’ll be sure to tell my Portuguese-speaking mother she should’ve had a Spanish last name so it doesn’t confuse some Canadian who speaks English and French.”

She snorts, leaning back and draping her arm over the side of the chair.

“Oh please, it’s not like it’s actually your name.”

Sergio stares at her incredulously. He has a baby with this woman; she might be the only living person who knows his true birthday and the routing numbers for his offshore accounts, and a light wave of hurt unsettles his stomach, similar to indigestion from hospital food, but all he’s had recently is jello.

He continues to stare until Anana opens and shuts her mouth in silent flustered bewilderment and finally says, “you’re telling me you did shady shit for a criminal organization  _under your real name_.”

“That’s the thing about working for the people who run the world,” he says in a voice laden with sarcasm, “if they want to spank me it won’t matter what  _name_  I’m using.”

“I wasn’t even sure you were really from Brazil.”

“Apparently everybody in South America’s named Ortega and we all speak Spanish anyway, so I don’t see why it matters.”

Anana turns slightly red in the face and crosses her arms.

“Fine,” she mutters, sounding a bit stiff. “You get a pass on mixing up dialects the next time we’re in Rankin Inlet.”

Rankin Inlet is one of his least favorite places in the world, and it’s got nothing to do with the weather, which is only about as goddamn cold as anywhere  _else_  within a five-hundred-mile radius of it.

“Tell that to your aunt,” he says, a little more caustically than he’d intended.

Anana, obviously amused, says, “she picks on you ‘cause she likes you. I used to bring home guys she’d just ignore like they were a piece of furniture.”

“She told me I should find some white girl and leave you alone.”

Anana grins. “See? She likes you.”

She scoots her chair closer to his bed and leans on the mattress, her arms a warm weight pressing against him through the blankets. “Besides, she’s old fashioned. She changed her tune when she met our kid.”

“I bet she had some things to say about that when I disappeared.”

She shrugs. “Didn’t have much to say about it at all. It’s why I like her so much. She’s kind of a prickly old harpy but she never says a single word against blood.”

Sergio swallows uncomfortably.  _Blood in, blood out._ All the broken pieces of family he’s never tried to pick up again: their blood wasn’t enough for it to mean a damn thing, in the end. 

She shifts in her seat and finds his hand.

“You’re blood too now,” she says, squeezing it. “Half of our little girl.”

“That was sort of a mistake,” he says, a smartass remark that tastes dead in his mouth.

Anana doesn’t stiffen, but she does take a moment to reply.

“I’d say accident. Mistake’s the word you use for something you regret.”

There isn’t… much at  _all_  to say to that; nothing that doesn’t make his throat close up when he tries. Him having a kid’s not something the chaotic mess of a universe ever should’ve allowed, but he’ll kill anything that tries to take her from him  _now_.

Anana sits up and brushes her hair back, a smooth motion she repeats several times, unnecessarily; her hair is straight and stays where she puts it.

“So I was wondering if you know when we’re going home,” she says, sounding strained.

“Don't wait up for me,” he says, and she flinches like she’s just been slapped.  _Goddammit._  He hadn’t meant– “the doctors want me to stay until I can walk without help, it might be a while.”

She nods. Licking her lips, she stares off to the side, eyes wet, and then scrubs at her face once with her sleeve.

“Sorry about the name thing,” she says at last. Her voice sounds thick; she clears her throat and then adds a bit defensively, “I mean you lied about everything else. About the only  _major_  you are is a pain in my ass.”

He shrugs, smirking slightly, and when she glares at him he says, “it wasn’t  _all_ a lie. I was a soldier once.”

“Sometime you can tell me about it,” she says, and leaves it for him to pick up: guns on kitchen tables stained by grease and blood, nights in a boiling favela, a youth that sticks to his memory, a sweat-soaked shirt against his back.

He left Rio more than fifteen years ago. Only been back once, and that was to get rid of some people too rich to sully themselves with the dirt he’d once stepped out of. There’s always been young kids, willing or not, to get churned in the mud in their place.

He stays silent. Nothing there to talk about.

Anana sees it for what it is and doesn’t push. Instead, she touches the hair above his ears where it’s starting to fleck silver; a familiar gesture from before, when things were new and constantly marred by a future neither of them wanted to face.  _You’re here, and you’re still alive._

“I’m more interested in this Sergio anyway,” she says, letting her hand drop. “Especially now that I know that’s actually his name.”

“ _Jesus_ , Anana,” he says, shaking his head; “and I thought _I_ had trust issues.”

Anana huffs a laugh. “No, you were just surrounded by assholes who couldn’t be  _trusted_.” She stands and turns on the lights; grabbing her purse, she rummages in the pockets for her keys, and the sterile lighting illuminates her heavily exhausted face. “That’s an  _asshole_  problem, not a trust issue.”

He’s tempted to congratulate her on her impromptu psychology degree, but the more pressing matter seems to be that she looks worse  _now_  than she ever did after staying up all night with a fussing baby. Most likely she hasn’t gotten a decent night’s rest since catching the bush plane that took her from the middle of nowhere to a city large enough to have an actual airport, and that was at least two days ago.

“You going to get some sleep?”

She pauses looking for her keys and runs her fingers down her face. Her hand shakes slightly: if she’s planning on driving, she probably shouldn’t be. “I got a room, if I can find the card to get into it.”

He considers for a moment, and then gingerly pushes himself to one side of the bed. Everything aches. If this is what getting old feels like he’s not sure he wants it. One upside to an early grave.

“You could stay. It’s probably not that much worse than whatever you paid for, and my guess is it’s not the Fairmont.”

She snorts. “Motel Six. Thanks, but the nurses might frown on me crawling into bed with a patient.”

“The nurses don’t give a shit,” he says. “Stay.”

She thinks about it for a moment, and with a long-suffering sigh she slips off her shoes. The bed creaks when she settles beside him.

With a teasing look she says, “the cute blond one might care,  _Ballerseros_.”

He gives her his fakest smile. “Shut up.“

“I’m just saying. I think you had a real connection–”

He shoves her shoulder and she grins.

They stay like that, close enough to touch, in a room that’s too cold for him and too warm for her. This might be the furthest south she’s ever been; he’s never asked. There’s a lot about her he doesn’t know and that’s not by accident.

He’s got whatever’s left of his life to find out, if that’s what he wants. For a moment tightness spreads through his chest like being trapped in a room with no air. He’s never let himself want anything beyond living to see tomorrow, and now tomorrow’s starting to look a lot longer.

He’ll have to figure out what to do with that.

“Where’s home these days?” he asks while she absentmindedly rubs her thumb over his wrist, drowsy but not quite out of it enough for him to feel bad about talking. “I don’t even know where you’re living.”

Anana’s mouth twitches.

“With my aunt,” she says; he makes a face that probably only conveys  _half_  of what he thinks about that, and he can feel the soft breathy edge of laughter when she leans over and kisses his shoulder. “She loves you, you idiot. She can’t wait for you to come home.”


End file.
